POLITEXT / CIÈNCIES, CULTURA I SOCIETAT 177 POLITEXT

This book is intended to be a practical

Carmen Bombardó Solés

ISBN 978-84-8301-966-5
9 788483 019665

Bombardó - Aguilar - Barahona

and clear guide to engineering students
who need to familiarize themselves with
the characteristics of technical writing in
order to become efficient writers in their
Marta Aguilar Pérez
Clàudia Barahona Fuentes
future technical professions. For this pur-
pose it includes authentic texts and re-
ference materials from different degrees
(general engineering, telecommunications, computing, civil en-
gineering, etc.) and promotes extensive writing practice through
a rich variety of tasks. The book also develops active learning
methods adapted to the European Higher Education Area fra-
mework. It follows three approaches (process, product and

Technical Writing
genre), the process approach being the central one to which the

A Guide for Effective Communication

Technical Writing
other two are subsumed. This is reflected in the organization of
its contents, which have basically been divided into three main
parts. The first is a thorough introduction to technical commu-
nication. The second includes three practical chapters that fully
develop the main stages of the writing process (pre-writing, wri-
A Guide for Effective Communication
ting and post-writing) and the third is a useful handbook.

The authors are lecturers at the Universitat Politècnica de Ca-

talunya (UPC) in the faculties of telecommunications, enginee-
ring and nautical studies respectively. They have extensive ex-
perience teaching technical communication and have carried
out research within the field of English for Academic and Spe-
cific Purposes.

UNIVERSITAT POLITÈCNICA DE CATALUNYA EDICIONS UPC

For our families
Contents

Part I. INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING 9

Technical writing at university 11

Chapter 1. What is technical writing? 13

1.1 Why is it important to study technical and professional communication? 14

1.2 Characteristics of technical writing 18
1.3 Functions of technical discourse 22

Part II. THE WRITING PROCESS 31

Introduction to the writing process 33

Chapter 2. Pre-writing stage 37

2.1 Introduction 38
2.2 Analyzing audience 38
2.3 Analyzing purpose 51
2.4 Considering style and tone 56
2.5 Generating ideas 72
2.6 Outlining 78

Chapter 3. Writing stage 85

3.1 Introduction 86
3.2 Drafting 86
3.3 Structuring the paragraph 87
3.4 Developing paragraph patterns 97

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

4 CONTENTS

3.5 Providing intra-paragraph coherence 113

3.6 Structuring the essay 130
3.7 Developing essay patterns 147
3.8 Providing inter-paragraph coherence 151
3.9 Incorporating visual aids 163

Chapter 4. Post-writing stage 179

4.1 Introduction 180

4.2 Revising content and organization 180
4.3 Checking for grammatical accuracy 183
4.4 Editing for style 203
4.5 Proofreading and peer review 220
4.6 Academic and sample texts 224

PART III. HANDBOOK 233

Introduction to the handbook 235

Chapter 5. Grammar, Style and Punctuation 237

5.1 Introduction 238

5.2. Main constituents in language: the phrase, the clause and the sentence 238
5.3 Revision of intra- and inter- coherence 244
5.4 Revision of grammar and style 256
5.5 Punctuation 263

APPENDIX 277
Key to the exercises 279

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

Preface

1. Purpose and approach

This book arose from the need to have a textbook to teach technical writing to Spanish
engineering students at university. Although there are good books on technical writing as
well as on writing in general on the market, we could not find one that suited our students’
needs: they were either too theoretical, too practical or simply aimed at students with a
different cultural background. Because of this, we decided to write a book that kept the
balance between the theoretical explanations necessary to understand the basic concepts on
which technical writing is based and the practical aspects that would enable students to put
into practice these theoretical concepts. After all, writing is a communication skill that is
mostly learnt and mastered by practising it; it is not enough to have a good command of
grammar and punctuation. Writing is a much more complex task requiring other techniques,
such as organizing ideas logically and clearly, joining sentences coherently, using the
appropriate tone and style, etc. Mastering writing, as any experienced writer knows, takes
time and practice and a good way to improve writing that cannot be overlooked is reading.
The more you read, the better you will write since reading is a practice that rubs off by
improving vocabulary, grammar and writing techniques in general. Thus, students are
encouraged to read as much as possible and from almost any kind of reading—magazines,
fiction books, newspapers, novels, Internet articles, etc. Although the kinds of documents
technical students will be asked to write may not require the same level of subtlety as for
example a novel, they still call for some of the same skills.
The book’s approach to writing is integrative and results from drawing on knowledge of
three different approaches—product, process and genre. The process approach is the central
one to which the other two are subsumed. We took the process approach as the core or
central one because we believe it highly contributes to the development of students’ writing
abilities as it gives much importance to the skills or stages involved in writing. In a word,
untrained writers, like most of our students, welcome having some sort of guidance to help
them get started and organize their ideas, and this approach has proved to serve this purpose.
We should emphasize that this approach is by no means prescriptive but acts more as

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

guidance allowing enough room for manoeuvre so that writers can adapt it to their own
writing preferences. However, insofar as the process approach does not cater for certain
fundamental teaching aspects such as the linguistic input and the different kinds of texts, it
became necessary to incorporate other approaches. In this sense, the product approach
accounts for the linguistic knowledge of texts, basically grammar and text structure, and
recognizes the importance of the text as a final product. In addition, the genre approach
acknowledges that writing takes place in a social context as a response to a particular need
and so heeds the writing conventions established by the technical and scientific community.
All in all, our approach seeks to merge the linguistic, procedural and social-cultural aspects
that intervene in the process of writing technical documents.

2. Book organization

This book has been organized into three main parts:

ƒ Part I. Introduction to Technical Writing

ƒ Part II. The Writing Process
ƒ Part III. Handbook

Part I, as its name indicates, introduces the basic concepts of technical writing: its
importance, definition and main characteristics, as well as a brief description of the main
functions found in this register.
Part II focuses on the process of writing. Its three main stages—pre-writing, writing and
post-writing—are fully developed. Substages and their associated linguistic and structural
aspects are also studied in detail.
Part III complements the former two by providing a summary of some language-related
aspects such as the main linguistic constituents and punctuation rules. Besides, it includes
further practice on the grammatical and stylistic points seen in Part II.

The parts are internally organized into an introduction and one or more chapters. The
introduction is aimed at contextualizing and unifying the content of the part. Likewise, the
chapters begin with a somewhat theoretical explanation of the topic in question which is
complemented with illustrative examples and, whenever possible, visual information, thus
facilitating understanding and appeal.
Finally, we would like to highlight the fact that this textbook is best complemented by a
good array of the most common technical documents that engineers and technical
professionals need to write at the workplace. For reasons of space and length, we decided to
devote this textbook to the writing process only, but students should, either simultaneously
or after Part II (or Part III), be exposed to a wide range of texts and have extensive and
intensive practice in writing all kinds of technical documents for different purposes and
situations.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

3. Methodology

Because this book is intended to be a practical and useful manual, the theoretical
explanations are followed by a wide range of tasks. In addition, in order to meet our
students’ needs, we have selected a variety of authentic texts from different sources (e.g.
textbooks, research articles, magazines, lab manuals, Internet web pages and even newspaper
articles) so as to cater for diverse engineering specialities. Having a considerable amount of
tasks and texts is a valuable resource for teachers as it allows them to select those they find
most convenient for their students. Keeping in mind that the activities are fundamentally
task-based, combined with some problem-solution ones, the criterion adopted to organize
them was to group the tasks according to whether they could be done individually or
collaboratively. We should point out that this task division is not fixed or closed in the sense
that individual tasks are only meant to be done individually and collaborative tasks only
collaboratively. On the contrary, this classification is quite flexible as teachers can decide
how the task can be carried out in class. Taking this into account, the different types of tasks
included in this book fall into the following categories:

ƒ Reflecting on questions. All chapters begin with what we called a reflecting on

activity whose main function is to make students aware of different aspects that will
be dealt with within the chapter. These awareness-raising questions also anticipate
what the chapter is about.

ƒ Task-based activities. These tasks aim to make students work with the different
writing techniques previously explained within the chapter. Their increasing level of
difficulty allows students to gradually become skilled at these techniques. This way,
students acquire the different skills necessary to succeed in the more global and
authentic problem-and-solution tasks.

ƒ Problem-and-solution tasks. With these types of tasks technical students will be

trained to work under similar circumstances to those they will find themselves in
their future professional career.

ƒ Critical thinking tasks. At some key points, evaluative thinking tasks have been
included to make students critically analyze different topics and situations. These
tasks go beyond subject-matter considerations and allow students to identify
weaknesses, assess alternatives and evaluate evidence by making reasoned
judgements.

ƒ Project. This globalizing activity is divided into three main parts corresponding to
the three main stages of the writing process and builds on the tasks within each
stage. This project can be carried out according to two main approaches, namely top-
down or bottom-up, so that students can choose the option that better suits their
idiosyncratic learning style.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

8 PREFACE

Both the flexibility of the tasks and the methodology described above enable this book to be
used within the incoming European Educational System as it caters for students’ individual
needs and learning styles and promotes collaborative learning (which allows for teamwork
with assignment of roles) and project work. Besides, the key to the exercises allows for great
flexibility and dynamism because teachers can decide which tasks are to be done and
corrected in class or at home, peer-reviewed or teacher-reviewed. In a word, the book can
also be used as a kind of self-study book, where students become more responsible for their
learning process by actively monitoring it.
The book can be used with both undergraduate and graduate students. Undergraduate
students who have not received any instruction on technical communication will probably
need to carefully read the theoretical explanations preceding most chapters and sections. In
contrast, more mature students will either skip or merely glimpse at the introductory
framework on their own at home and go straight to the tasks that will help them improve
those skills in which they might be less proficient.
Finally, the materials also adapt to teachers with different teaching styles and with different
degrees of experience in written communication. For example, teachers with little experience
in written communication may well appreciate a structured and reasoned theoretical
explanation before plunging into the tasks, whereas more experienced teachers can exploit
this theory as a critical thinking or reflecting on task, thus making lessons more dynamic.

Acknowledgements

We thank the authors and publishers of the material cited in this book for kindly giving us
reprint permission. Although every effort has been made to contact authors and publishers,
this has not always been possible so any information from them will be welcome and
omissions or errors will be corrected.
To our students we owe their kind permission to use their written work and their comments
because they greatly contributed to a better version of this book.
Thanks are also due to Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara from Leeds Metropolitan
University for their encouragement and their endless suggestions on innovative possibilities.
They made us realize that this book is just a first attempt that will certainly need future
revisions, as a textbook can never be a finished product. We are also indebted to Helen East
from the Language Unit at the University of Cambridge for her wise and discerning
suggestions.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

PART I
INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING

CHAPTER 1
What is technical writing?

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007
Technical writing at university

I’m a university student, I

can write well, so... why
should I learn to write?

Haven’t you ever had this thought, or a similar one? Of course, most of you are more or less
competent writers in your first language—maybe some even in English. In fact, many people
can get through their lives with just a first language literacy to write postcards, recipes,
shopping lists, or odd messages. These documents are quite spontaneous and transient and
therefore do not require a large amount of planning. But we are not addressing you as
apprentice writers or as English language beginners. Not even as proficient writers in general
English. We are addressing you as future skilled professionals who need to perfect their
writing skills in English from a professional point of view. This implies that you will need to
be acquainted with certain types of documents, known as genres, which have specific
characteristics (e.g. layout, content or style). The examples mentioned above (a recipe, a
postcard or the shopping list) stand out as everyday life genres you already know very well.
Yet, in your professional life you may very well need to write formal business letters and
reports of different kinds. Each of these genres has its own characteristics and conventions
that make it a genre and, as engineers, you’ll be expected to write them appropriately.

One of our objectives in this book is to provide you with an awareness of the differences in
language use that are associated with different contexts: engineers today are expected to be
multiliterate (i.e. be able to use different registers according to the different communicative
situations). As engineers you will soon realize that being literate is not enough and that

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

12 PART I. Introduction to technical writing

writing an email to a friend is not the same as writing in a job-related context. Although at
this point we are just scratching the surface, you should be aware of what readers will expect
your documents to look like. You should then be competent enough and deploy writing skills
that allow you to adapt your documents to every writing situation. Being multiliterate in the
sense defined above is not usually an easy task because you need to have a good command
of:

ƒ content knowledge: technical and scientific knowledge that is transferred to you at

university,
ƒ context knowledge: you should be sensitized about the importance of the scientific
community or academic context in which your documents will be read,
ƒ English language knowledge: level of proficiency in terms of syntax, grammar,
vocabulary, etc. in general-purpose English and in technical English,
ƒ genre knowledge: knowledge of the different written genres used in the technical
professions, and
ƒ writing process knowledge: knowledge of the most efficient writing skills and
techniques for a writing task.

See how the above categories of knowledge can help you identify some of your knowledge
gaps and self-assess your current level of writing competence at this very initial stage. More
specifically, try to find out with which categories you would encounter difficulties when
writing the documents below:

9 Request for detailed figures of faulty end 9 MSc final project or thesis
products 9 Technical manual
9 Evaluation of a machine breakdown 9 Brochure
9 Laboratory report 9 Journal (research) article
9 Departmental monthly report 9 Email to a business contact
9 Report on a meeting or visit 9 Letters of rejection, complaint, etc.
9 Newspaper article

Finally, there are different techniques that can help you improve your writing skills as
engineers. For example, it has been demonstrated that reading plays a crucial role in learning
a foreign language and, most importantly, that good readers make good writers. Reading is
very beneficial, but only if you read voluntarily, extensively and for pleasure. As you can
imagine, however, reading is not enough. Apart from reading, you should also write and
write because while you are learning to write you are also writing to learn the language and
to be an efficient communicator. The more you read and the more you write, the better
writers you will become. Last but not least, it can also be very helpful for you to acquire
some autonomy to allow you to actively participate in your learning process, for example by
monitoring your learning and choosing the tasks that best suit your needs and preferences.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

CHAPTER 1
What is technical writing?

1.1 Why is it important to study technical and professional communication?

1.2 Characteristics of good technical writing
1.3 Functions of technical discourse

Reflecting on…

Do you think communication skills are of minor importance in scientific and

technical studies?

Do you think a technical student can write as well as a humanities student?

What characteristics do you think distinguish a technical text from a non-technical

one?

How can your knowledge of general purpose English help you towards writing
technical documents?

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

1.1 Why is it important to study technical and professional communication?

In a world of rushing and pressure to save time, writing documents seems slow and time-
consuming. Why write a letter or a memo if you can make a quick phone call? Why spend
time thinking about how to put into words information that can be transmitted spontaneously
without the extra effort of heeding syntax and punctuation? This logical reasoning fails,
though, when we come to consider the type of documents technical writers need to develop
as well as the audience they are addressed to. On many occasions, communication is not just
from one emitter to one receiver but rather from one to many, as is the case of memos
addressed to company staff, or a report meant to be read by more than one person, for
example. In addition, most documents generated in the technical field include information
that cannot be easily transmitted unless it is orderly displayed on a document. In other words,
oral communication may fall short when we need to transmit the information technical
documents require. Hence, writing skills can be considered an important factor in the
technical and scientific field because:

1. In many different types of work, writing constitutes an important part of the everyday
workload. In a company, people write to inform about a project or activity (progress reports),
to help managers in decision-making (recommendation reports), to communicate within the
organization (memos), to ask questions (inquiry letters) and to contact colleagues,
distributors, and mates in the same workplace (email messages). These various tasks reveal
that writing is a key activity for many technical professionals.

2. They facilitate communication with co-workers, clients and supervisors, that is, inside and
outside the workplace. Engineers and scientists’ writing skills must be of a high standard in
order to effectively communicate with the people with whom they work. It is not enough for
them to be technically good, they must be skilful in communicating what they are doing and
why it is important. As a last resort, their technical and professional value will very much
depend on their capacity to convince others of the importance of their work.

3. They are necessary for a successful career. Organizations know the advantages of a well-
written document since the way they construct their documents reflects their image. Poorly
written documents will reveal not only writers’ inefficiency but also organizations’ lack of
seriousness. Thus, engineers who can communicate their thoughts clearly and efficiently are
bound to be promoted to more challenging positions. Additionally, being good at written
communication skills (in whatever language) is likely to act as an added value that enhances
your curriculum vitae and helps you stand out from other applicants in a job selection
process.

4. Writing skills contribute to saving time and money. Good technical writing saves time
and, therefore, money. If you create a document, a report, for example, for your superior,
which is clear and easy to understand, no time will be wasted on pondering the meaning. In

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

PART II
THE WRITING PROCESS

CHAPTER 2
Pre-writing stage

CHAPTER 3
Writing stage

CHAPTER 4
Post-writing stage

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007
Introduction to the writing process

Try to remember the last time you had to write a more or less formal (academic or
professional) document. With the help of the questions below, reflect on your usual writing
habits and their usefulness.

‰ Did you do anything before beginning to write (for example, mentally scan the main
ideas you wanted to transmit and/or jot them down, look for information, schedule your
work in terms of time, outline before or after your first draft)?
‰ What did you do when writing (simply sit in front of the computer, create a new
document and begin writing your final version, write several drafts)?
‰ What did you do once you had completed your first version (allow for thorough revision,
quickly scan for any mistakes, print it and hand it in)?

Beginning to write may be a hard task for most people as ideas come mixed up in a
disorderly manner. In trying to get started, many different aspects come into mind: content,
style, grammar, etc. and it may be difficult to cope with them all at the same time: In order to
seek guidance and to acquire confidence, the writer may find it useful to resort to some kind
of systematic and integrative approach which takes into consideration the most important
aspects of writing.
The integrative approach adopted in this book draws on knowledge of different approaches
to writing (see Figure 1). On the one hand, it takes into account the linguistic knowledge
about texts, namely, grammar and text structure. Mastering syntax, an appropriate use of
vocabulary and cohesive devices as well as patterns of information organization become
essential to produce well-written texts. This is known as product approach. On the other
hand, the integrative approach also pays attention to the writing skills or stages involved in
writing. Novice writers should be made aware of writing as a process consisting of different
stages (planning, drafting, revising, etc.) when creating a text (process approach). Finally,
this approach also heeds the social context, mainly the purpose and audience the document is
addressed to, as well as the writing conventions established by the technical and scientific
community (genre approach).

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

 PROCESS APPROACH
Writing skills and stages

GENRE
PRODUCT APPROACH
APPROACH Social
Linguistic
INTEGRATIVE
context
knowledge WRITING (audience,
(grammar APPROACH purpose and
and text writing
structure) conventions)

Fig. 1

At this point it is useful to clarify that the three approaches mentioned above will be
combined into one by subsuming the product and the genre approach under the process
approach which, in turn, will serve as the guide to organizing the information in the
following chapters. However, the writing approach presented below is by no means intended
to be prescriptive. Instead it has been designed to provide guidance allowing enough room
for manoeuvre so that writers can adapt these guidelines to their own writing preferences and
style. We view writing as a non-linear and recursive process composed of three main stages:

1. Pre-writing. Before beginning to write you should invest some time planning what
to write and how to transmit the information. In order to do this you should consider
(a) audience and purpose (who you are writing to and why), (b) tone and style (how
you transmit the information), (c) gathering of information (brainstorming, analysing
sources of information, etc.) and (d) outlining (organization of information).

2. Writing. Once you have gathered and organized the information, you can begin
writing a first draft. At this stage, it is important to consider the main parts of the
text, paragraph development and coherence as well as genre conventions. As you
revise and consider all these aspects, it may be helpful to use representative models
as a reference.

3. Post-writing. The final stage of the writing process involves (a) revising content and
organization, (b) checking for grammatical accuracy (c) editing for style and (d)
proofreading and peer review. These steps will help you spot any inconsistencies in
your document so as to produce a flawless final version.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

The three main stages of the writing process together with their corresponding substages are
shown in Figure 2 below.

The
Writing
Process

Fig. 2

Some of the benefits that can be obtained from adopting this process approach are outlined
below:

ƒ It helps the writer overcome the blank page syndrome and therefore get started.
ƒ It serves the writer as a guide to writing since it suggests possible steps to follow in the
writing process.
ƒ It makes the writer aware of contextual considerations such as audience and purpose.
ƒ It promotes awareness of the writing process.
ƒ It accounts for individual variation, that is, it encompasses different learning styles and
preferences.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

36 PART II. The writing process

The chapters that follow develop in detail the three main stages of the writing process–pre-
writing, writing and post-writing—to help you improve your writing skills. Chapter 2
focuses on the pre-writing stage, in which you must examine your purpose(s), determine
your audience, consider the style and tone to adopt, gather data and decide how to organize
information. Chapter 3 is based on the writing stage itself. In this chapter you will learn to
develop paragraphs, to order information and to provide coherence to your document while
drafting your text. Chapter 4 deals with the final stage of the writing process, the post-
writing stage. This stage is essential for successful writing as it allows you to polish your
document for a perfect final version. For practical purposes, the three stages of the writing
process are described in this book in the order described above but remember that this
process is dynamic and flexible, and that the different stages often overlap. Therefore, you
may go back and forth at your convenience while you draft your document.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

CHAPTER 2
Pre-writing stage

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Analyzing audience
2.3 Analyzing purpose
2.4 Considering style and tone
2.5 Generating ideas
2.6 Outlining

Reflecting on…

By and large, writers are usually recommended to bear in mind ‘contextual

factors’ when it comes to writing a text. Can you guess what these ‘contextual
factors’ might be?

Imagine you have to write a document that describes the latest improvements on
a particular product. How may this document differ when aimed at the head of
the technical department and the general public? Could you provide a list of
different groups of readers an engineer may address his/her documents to?

How is your attitude towards the topic and your relationship with readers reflected
in your writing?

Can you think of different ways of organizing ideas before writing a document?
Which method do you usually prefer? Why?

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

2.1 Introduction

Imagine you have just been told to write a short report. What is your usual reaction? Do you
sit in front of the computer, create a new document and begin jotting down sentences as
ideas come to your mind? If this is what you do, you have a slim chance of writing an
appropriate, coherent and effective document. Unless you are an expert writer, you should
spend some time on what is known as the pre-writing stage.
The pre-writing stage is a very important stage with many aspects to be considered before
you actually begin writing. As you will make decisions that will affect and determine the
content, approach, or structure of your document, it pays to devote time to answering
relevant questions and seriously considering the different alternatives available. In the pre-
writing stage the following questions should be addressed:

ƒ WHO am I writing to and WHY?

Consider audience and purpose.

ƒ HOW should I transmit the information?

Consider tone and style.

ƒ WHAT ideas should I include in my document?

Gather information (by generating ideas, analyzing information sources, etc.).

ƒ HOW should I organize and structure this information to best suit the audience’s
needs and to accomplish my purpose?
Outline (organize information).

2.2 Analyzing audience

Before writing a document you need to know your audience in order to satisfy its needs. It
may be a good idea to develop a profile of the audience you are addressing by answering the
following questions:

Who is going to read the document? Here you should analyze the audience’s characteristics
such as educational and cultural background, position within the company and English
competence. In addition, you should take into account whether the text is addressed to a
single person or a large group and consider the possibility that a secondary audience might
also read your document.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

PART III
HANDBOOK

CHAPTER 5
Grammar, style and punctuation

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007
Introduction to the handbook

As we mentioned at the beginning of the book our main purpose is that you become
acquainted with certain types of documents, known as genres, and also that you become
competent enough and with sufficient writing skills to adapt your documents to every writing
situation. However, we know that engineering students come from heterogeneous
backgrounds and exhibit different language competence levels. In the light of this, the final
part of this book has been designed as a tool to help you improve your competence with
respect to different aspects: main constituents in language, inter and intra-paragraph
coherence, grammar, style and punctuation. The tasks included to practise these aspects have
purposely been designed for individual work, so you can choose those tasks and materials
that best suit your needs, English competence and learning style. In this sense, we encourage
you to learn effectively and individually and to become responsible for your own learning
process.
Apart from the practical tasks included in this final chapter, remember that there are other
ways to improve your writing competence. As you probably know, the Internet is a powerful
tool for language learning as it fosters the use of authentic communication in English,
basically through the integration of reading and writing skills. Some Internet resources you
can use when designing your own learning route are:

ƒ Web-based learning materials. Some of their advantages are that they are highly
interactive, provide immediate feedback (often with explanations) and contain
resources classified according to criteria such as level of difficulty or type of task.
Particularly useful are placement tests, which will provide you with information
about your actual level of English and will allow you to identify your strong and
weak points.

ƒ Search engines. They may help you learn more about specific expressions and terms
by exploring how they are used in authentic texts posted on the web. In this sense,
search engines may be used as “dictionaries” that provide you with actual examples
of language use.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

236 PART III. Handbook

ƒ Online concordancers. By entering a word, phrase or structure, they provide you

with a list of examples of terms within their immediate context from a corpus or
collection of texts gathered for language study.

ƒ Online collocation samplers. They can be used to retrieve a word's most significant
collocates from a corpus.

These are just some examples of the online resources that foster an exploratory approach to
language and that encourage you to be a more reflective and informed learner as they require
you to evaluate your own performance, find answers for yourselves and contrast language
forms and texts. The Internet may, in this sense, be particularly helpful if you want to
assume a more active role in your learning process. By working autonomously and making
informed decisions (concerning the choice of activities, self-assessment, etc.) you will
become a more effective learner and thus improve your writing skills and competence.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

CHAPTER 5
Grammar, style and punctuation

5.1 Introduction
5.2 Main constituents in language: the phrase, the clause and the sentence
5.3 Revision of intra- and inter-coherence
5.4 Revision of grammar and style
5.5 Punctuation

Reflecting on…
What is most important for you when writing in English? What are your priorities, just
to communicate or to communicate accurately?

What kinds of skills (listening, speaking, writing and reading) are you particularly
good or bad at?

What are the main difficulties you encounter when writing in English? Can you
recall the most common grammatical and stylistic mistakes you make?

Does your motivation to learn technical English writing arise from your professional
or academic development, or from a personal interest?

What sort of language learner would you say you are? First choose the adjectives
that best describe you (analytical, intuitive, careless, motivated, perfectionist,
autonomous, impulsive, cooperative). Now reflect on the advantages and
disadvantages of the learning style you most identify with.

What are your strengths and weaknesses as an English language learner?

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

5.1 Introduction

This last chapter is devoted to providing further practice to those students who feel they need
some extra exercises and want to work autonomously to improve their written
communication in English. The exercises are intended to help students reinforce linguistic
aspects that can be troublesome. The chapter opens with a summarized description of the
main linguistic elements of the text, that is, the sentence, the clause and the phrase. Given
that these linguistic elements are constantly referred to throughout the course, both in the
theoretical and in the practical parts, we thought it would be very useful to include a
definition of each, together with some clarifying examples. In general, students at technical
schools are very prone to forgetting grammatical concepts they once learned at primary or
secondary school, as the main emphasis in technical studies is basically placed on numerical
material rather than on any other type of written communication. As a result, we are setting
forth a practical revision of intra- and inter-coherence, and grammatical and stylistic aspects,
a revision developed through a rich variety of exercises. Finally, another important point is
punctuation—often disregarded by technical students—which has been included with the
purpose of helping you write more clearly and punctuate appropriately.

5.2 Main constituents in language: the phrase, the clause and the sentence
Before beginning with a practical revision of the aspects mentioned above, and in order not
to clutter you up with a long and tedious description of grammatical concepts, we will be
giving a cursory glance at the hierarchical structure of language. This will provide you with a
sufficiently general picture of the different levels in language hierarchy, essential for you to
understand the grammatical and linguistic concepts dealt with in this book. Another
advantage of looking at the main constituents in language is that you will become familiar
with the most basic terminology and associated concepts. Good writing certainly calls for a
clear understanding of the sentence and of at least the next two lower levels that constitute a
sentence (i.e., the clause and the phrase). We believe that basic grammatical definitions will
enable you to improve your command of the English language.

Fig. 5.1 Main constituents in language

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

The phrase
A phrase is a linguistic element made up of one or more than one word and has no subject-
predicate structure. In a scale of complexity, it is found between the word and the clause.
The main types of phrases are listed below:

ƒ Noun phrase
e.g. The resistor, the flat resistor, the old flat resistor
ƒ Verb phrase
e.g. corrode, has corroded, to avoid corrosion, are seriously corroding
ƒ Prepositional phrase
e.g. on the surface, through the pipe, before the test
ƒ Adverbial phrase
e.g. yesterday morning, slowly, there

The clause

A clause is a group of words comprising a subject and a predicate (Verb, Complement,

Object and Adverbial) that constitutes a sentence or part of a sentence. Clauses can be
dependent or subordinate and independent or main. In the sentence He went to the lab
because he had to use the oscilloscope, He went to the lab is a main clause whereas because
he had to use the oscilloscope is a dependent clause. Note that a main clause makes sense on
its own and therefore can be equated with a sentence. On the other hand, a dependent clause
cannot stand by itself since it depends on some other element in the sentence and cannot be
punctuated as an independent clause. This can be seen in the following examples:

e.g. Although he graduated at the age of 26.

As soon as the gas enters the engine.
Since the mechanism failed.
So that the mistake is not repeated.
Which didn’t come out successfully.

Clauses can also be finite and non-finite. Nearly all independent sentences are finite as they
contain verbs that can be used with a subject to make a verb tense (i.e. the verb is inflected
for tense, person and number). For example, both He graduated in engineering and Since he
is still writing the report, are finite clauses. On the other hand, non-finite clauses are clauses
that cannot be used with a subject to make a verb tense. There are four main types of non-
finite clauses:
ƒ Present participle clause, e.g. Leaving the library, the student dropped his ID
ƒ Past participle clause, e.g. Covered with sand, the thermometer was found working.
ƒ Infinitive with to clause, e.g. The next step is to assemble the fittings.
ƒ Infinitive without to clause, e.g. Rather than copy the document, he faxed it.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

APPENDIX
KEY TO THE EXERCISES

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

Key to the exercises
This key aims to guide both teachers and students but it should not be taken as a closed,
prescriptive answer key. On many occasions, we are providing one possible version of the
task, which does not mean other ways of answering certain questions or approaching a given
problem are not possible.

CHAPTER 1

TASK 1-1

Writing is necessary to transmit the merits of your work, your ideas and aspirations. It can
be mostly improved by reading as much as you can and by asking a peer or colleague to
review your writing.
Reading is necessary to improve your vocabulary, your grammar and your storytelling
abilities; it is necessary to improve your writing. Reading can be improved by reading more.
Speaking is necessary to convey your ideas at meetings, to brief your peers after a business
trip, to adapt a proposal to a client, to present a project to the general public, etc. Speaking
can be improved by gathering as much information as possible to make you feel confident,
by analyzing your audience’s needs and accommodating your speech to them accordingly,
by using PowerPoint or any other audiovisual aid with confidence, by practicing and
rehearsing before your presentation, by sticking to the allotted time, and finally by looking
for opportunities to speak.
Listening is necessary to communicate, whether in face-to-face interactions or over the
telephone, for example. It can be improved by paying attention to what is said as well as to
the speaker’s intention, feelings and body language, by trying to reduce distractions, by
looking at the speaker and responding appropriately (e.g. nodding), or by asking if you don’t
understand. You should always respect the speaker and never interrupt him/her.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007

TASK 1-2

The first text is certainly non-technical. There are many reasons that support this. If, first of
all, we analyze the title, we realize that despite being somehow related to the technical field,
it is not introducing a properly technical topic. If we go on reading, we come to the
conclusion that the content is not technical due to the following reasons:
1) Absence of technical vocabulary. No technical expressions are used; instead we
find some compound nouns, which are not really very technical (information-
carrying bits, savvy information-age citizen, hard-earned bits). The acronym IQ
appears without a definition as it is well-known.
2) Absence of functions such as definitions, description, instructions, etc.
3) Absence of formulas, statistics, graphs and numerical expressions.
4) Use of informal style. This is shown through some direct questions, personal
pronouns (I, you, we) and informal expressions (the right to bath daily in tubs of bits,
watch the excess of information drain away, savvy).
5) Use of subjective tone. Subjective tone is conveyed here with the use of expressions
such as I’m not sure, since we don’t seem to have a lot of choice, when I no longer
have the strength and ability…
6) Use of ironic tone. From beginning to end an ironic tone is used and is reflected in
expressions like the era to come will be much better than the Ice Age, no one has
told me what I’m supposed to do with all those bits, can I hide bits in my mattress,
against the rainy day when I find myself bitless?
The second text is clearly technical. It is technical because it displays many of the
characteristics that define a technical text. As for the title, however, we cannot say that it
introduces a technical topic by the way it is stated; it is too general to be taken as an early
indication of the technical content of the text. Apart from the title, there are many more
characteristics that corroborate the technicality of the text, among which we have:
1) Use of technical vocabulary, compound nouns and acronyms. There are many
technical terms (error burst, interleaving, interpolation, muting), terms of Latin
origin (minimal, imperfection, erroneous) and compound nouns (compact disk
digital audio, novel audio storage approach, digital storage technique, powerful
error control coding scheme) used all through the text. There are also two acronyms
which are properly defined (CD and CIRC).
2) Use of rhetorical functions, specifically definitions of some of the technical terms
previously mentioned (interleaving, interpolation, muting), function and process
description in the last paragraph and finally visual-verbal relationship (see Table 4).
3) Use of a numerical expression: two millimetres into an error burst of 2400 bits in
length.
4) Use of a short list to organize information. Some of the information in paragraph
two is organized in a formatted list [(1) and (2)].
Finally, it should be noted that the tone is objective and straightforward as opposed to the
subjective and ironic tone in the previous text.

© The Authors, 2007. © Edicions UPC, 2007